I like Rose, Nine and Jack. A fun TARDIS team. More stories with them is always nice. It’s fun how they were able to slot this in between some TV episodes. If only the story they slotted in there was good.

Weapons of past destruction is interesting. It almost tries to be a classic DW serial. Shorter ‘episodes’ that together form a larger story. The problem is that you can’t do that kind of format in your comic book if every ‘episode’ is only 22 pages long. Or well, at least this writer could not.

I appreciate the idea of having modern Who in the style of classic Who. But classic Who works that way because each episode is able to tell partly an individual story, while at the same time always having the main narrative be the vocal point to drive those individual stories forward. Weapons of past destruction’s individual ‘episodes’ do not link well with each other. It reads like it wants to avoid its own main narrative. After Rose gets lost at the cliffhanger of part 1, the story leaves the alien ship that they were in completely behind and goes on a whole other adventure at the market Rose ended up on. We don’t get back to the alien ship until the very end. When we’re finally there, they also expect part one to have been enough exposition for the aliens. You know, let’s get to that part one. Let me summarize that real quick. Actually let’s just go over the entire story, shall we? We shall.

Before that, gotta say I quite like the cliffhangers. That’s where my liking also ends.

Part one, we arrive at an alien ship. There are alien robots who are at war with someone else. There is lots of running and explosions and not a lot of other things. Our TARDIS team decides to leave. Because they are stupid idiots they leave Rose behind. Rose gets sucked into the time vortex, somehow.
This part does the bare minimum needed to introduce the main story. Which it has to, or else there wouldn’t be a story to begin with. It shows us aliens and tells is that they are at war with mysterious other aliens. That is all it manages to do in 22 pages. That is all it seems to want to do. Most of the chapter is filled up with running, screaming and the usual. The writer seemed to think: ‘oh, i introduced my plot to the audience. Seems I’m done with this part!’ And then filled the rest up with the longest action sequences they could think of. They seemed to have forgotten that this ‘part one, only used as an introduction’ is 1/5 of your entire story.

With part 2 Rose ends up at a market, a bazaar. Though it takes us more than half of the chapter to even get to that. Because we need the Doctor and Jack to waffle and bicker for a few more pages about completely irrelevant things. Our TARDIS team reunites at the bazaar, yay they have found each other. Then the Doctor decides to get upset about Gallifreyan things and causes a bit of a ruckus. He talks about his memory for the rest of part 2. Then, wow the aliens from before are now there. Play cliffhanger tune.
So basically, quite literally, nothing happened for the entirety of the chapter. Some pieces of information are dropped that become kinda relevant later but also not really, and that’s it. Part 2 doesn’t tell a competent enough narrative by itself. If you picked up that individual issue you would have had nothing, aside from those pieces of information for later. It doesn’t even follow up on things that happened in the previous chapter. The info that was given here could have easily been put into another chapter as well, or just not given at all, as it’s not very important. Part 2 is the definition of filler in comic books, and a big part of what I hate about the US comics climate.

Part 3 does not do a lot to make part 2 look better. Those robot aliens from part one? They struggle with them for 2 pages, where the Doctor gets to make funny references ha ha, and the aliens get to say DIE wow this is so impactful and original and then they are immediately killed by horse-people. Then they fight! Wow! Boom explosions! More explosions! Lots of running! Then WOOOW WHAT? The Doctor gets killed! No way! Guys I can’t believe they actually killed the Doctor! Whaaat? He isn’t dead?! Omg what a twist. I can’t keep this up guys. Rose and Jack run away more running run run, a little bit of timey wimey happens which is fun! Then end of part 3. Basically, nothing happened again.

These kinds of overly drawn out action sequences that we keep seeing are heavily dependent on the art and staging being good and creative. Especially when the dialogue is so short and empty. If you are particularly fond of these characters, you might find this a little more excusable though. Because a lot of this dialogue is just reactionary “thing happens, character does what you would expect them to do”. If these are your blorbos, then yeah, they are all written well in character, so you might enjoy that. But I find a need for more than that.

Well, how nice! At part 4 the plot is finally picked up a little again. You know, it’s only too bad that half the pages are already behind us now. Rose ends up back at the robot aliens, who turn out to not be robots. FINALLY something relevant happens with them. Jack ends up alone in the TARDIS and gets to the Doctor. The Doctor is with the horse people who tell about how they are the new keepers of time. The alien not robots are the bad guys they are at war with. Some time-war lore dump, which I personally quite enjoyed (I had to get some fun from this). But we can’t have the plot keep progressing! Because now there is a fracture in time that needs solving!!!!! So the horse people give a time-vaccin to the Doctor. Lots of running, everyone acting like this is very important, the Doctor uses the time-vaccin and the day is saved. Sorry, but this isn’t what I mean with “have each episode tell an individual story”. This is again, avoiding the actual plot to do something completely unrelated to fill the page count.  The individual stories have to be parts of the larger narrative that also feel complete on their own. Or at the very least, just have each part feel relevant to the larger narrative. This is straight up wasting time. Ironic for a segment that is about saving it. Then the cliffhanger; it’s Rose, now seemingly working together with the not robot aliens.

At part 5 there are finally things happening. But these are the last 22 pages. That is not enough to satisfyingly finish even this flimsy setup.

So what happens basically is: the Doctor goes with Rose to the not robot aliens and hears their side of the story. Now he understands, the horse people are the bad guys. They are just as bad as the time lords. So he gives a DoctorWhoSpeech™. Oh yeah btw Jack was talking with one of the horse people the entire time and they saw the future and now realize they are the bad guys. They are brought to a place where they can live in peace the end.

Well, the last chapter is certainly the best one. Doesn’t mean it’s good. It’s the part that I have the least complaints about. That fits better.

The idea that there would be ‘new time lords’ after the time war anyways is a good concept. But it doesn’t go anywhere. It’s just solved by seeing the future. The Doctor doesn’t worry about there being other groups like this or something. It’s just over haha wholesome ending.

Even the last chapter isn’t very good. The reason I like it the most is because it actually does something. It’s still a very lame story. It’s not terribly well paced, full of annoying clichés and no real satisfying conclusion. But it’s at least a story, which at this point has become enough for me.

That was my thorough analysis of the writing. Now follows my analysis of the art.

The drawings were not always ugly.

Okay yeah no that was a little bit of a joke of course, but it is how I generally feel about it. Backgrounds are quite good. But faces are ugly, and too many of the drawings look static. I also kind of hate the colouring. It detracts even more from the already not very readable pages.

Weapons of past destruction is such an infuriating comic. It is very weak. But most of all, it leans so much more to feeling like a product. This wasn’t made to be art. Probably not even made to be enjoyed. It was made to be sold. And that only. It was written to get to the perfect amount of pages to sell individual issues (now i’m realizing why the only thing i can find a real effort in is the cliffhangers) and then a big expensive omnibus.
I haven’t read a lot of Titan’s DW run yet, but this one doesn’t make it look very promising.